The Dead & Dying

by William Todd Rose

  Lying in front of the boom box was what appeared to be the plastic case for a series of motivational tapes of some sort. They were labeled, in large black letters RISE UP AND OVERCOME: Personal Power Through Positive Belief. One of the tapes was missing from its slot and I noticed it securely nestled in the jam box’s tape deck. Funny, the things your mind will latch onto when what you really need is to think of something useful. For example, I also noticed that the boom box wasn’t plugged in, that there was no cord connecting it to the outlet on the wall.

  An idea flared in my mind like a match striking. I bolted from the chair, grabbed the boom box with both hands and flipped it over. I fumbled with the little plastic covering and finally popped it out. Six D-cell batteries inside. There might be hope yet.

  I then ran over to the exit door which had a little sign advising that an alarm would sound if opened. Seeing as how power was gone from this street, however, I didn’t think that would really be much of an issue. Pushing it open, I peeked outside and saw that it lead into a typical alley: brick buildings on either side, dumpsters, graffiti.

  Alrighty then, I thought. Let’s pray this works.

  Returning to the boom box, I turned the volume knob until it could go no further. Then I slid the three little paddles on the equalizer to the very top of their troughs and depressed the little button labeled bass boost. The office door I propped open with a computer tower and then, pausing only for a moment, I pressed the play button on the tape deck.

  As the words came booming from the speakers, I made for the exit and slipped out into the alley I’d glimpsed earlier. My heart was pounding and adrenaline was surging through my veins like a ruptured water main. But I forced myself to slow down, to walk as softly through the alley as I could and to press myself into the shadows.

  In the silence of the town, I could hear the narrator on the tapes almost as clearly as if I were wearing headphones.

  “… you have to believe. Now, what exactly do I mean by believe? Isn’t belief a simple matter of…. ”

  By the time I got to the mouth of the alley, I could just make out the church in the distance. The zombies were still hammering at the door and walls, still scrambling to gain entrance in any way they could.

  “It’s not working.” I thought. “Son of a bitch, it’s not working!”

  “… having a conviction from information received from, or derived by, your five senses? Yes and no.”

  As I watched however, I saw one of the corpses whip its head back toward the street. It stood there for a moment like a coon hound catching a scent. Others took notice as well and the entire crowd began to slowly turn toward the source of the sound. The thudding on the walls had completely stopped now, which made the words of the motivational speaker even more distinct and clear.

  “What I am talking about is belief based on the presumption that you…. ”

  Like water bursting through an earthen dam, they spilled out onto the street. A few freshies in the pack led the way, but the rotters straggled after as quickly as their deteriorating muscle would allow.

  I pressed myself flat against the alley wall, hoping that the shadows and their single-mindedness would help cloak me from view. I heard them pass with the sound of feet shuffling against concrete, fart-like sounds as gas from rotting organs escaped, scraping and dragging. The smell drifted into the alley like I was downwind from a pig farm after slaughtering day. I held my breath and pinched my nose to keep from gagging on the noxious stench, to keep from giving away my hiding place with a retch.

  I heard the breaking of glass, things toppling over with thumps and thuds, and knew they had entered the store. As quickly and quietly as possible I started making my way toward the church, making sure to stay as far from the line of sight of the store as possible. Just in case any of them happened to look out the window at the pillaged street beyond.

  Almost halfway there and all I could think was, it’s working, it’s really working….

  Then I noticed that the man on the tape had begun to slur his words, sounding like a drunkard four shots into a binge. The sentences were getting slower and seemed to be dragging.

  “Good god, can’t I catch a fuckin’ break?”

  It had never occurred to me that the batteries in the boom box might not be fresh. And there had been a whole display out in the front part of the store, too….

  Abandoning caution, I sprinted the rest of the way to the church as the words from the tape continued to drag slower and slower. I was pretty sure the door to the church was locked, but I also knew it had been weakened by the undead barrage; as I neared the top of the steps at full speed, I threw myself into the air and crashed into the wood with my shoulder.

  The impact jarred my entire body, but the door flung open with a sharp, metallic ping and I was suddenly rolling across the inside of the church.

  The little boy started screaming and I tried to quiet him, to reassure him.

  “Jason, it’s me. Carl. Shhhh. They’ll hear you.”

  He was lying on the floor beneath a ladder and even from this distance I could see that his left ankle was swollen to the size of a grapefruit and was covered with blue and black bruises.

  He must’ve thought I was one of them, because he started trying to crawl his way backward, all the while screaming in a shrill voice.

  “Get away from me! Leave me alone! Help!”

  “Jason, it’s Carl. I know you’re scared, but you have to be quiet.”

  I looked back over my shoulder through the doorway. Good. Apparently his screams hadn’t distracted them from trying to find the person they assumed was hiding somewhere in the electronics store. But how much longer would the tape fool them? How much longer before the boy’s voice drew them back to the church?

  “Shhhh.”

  Frustration spread like an oil spill within my belly, making me nauseous and tense. I scrambled to the boy and clamped my hand over his mouth, but then there was a flash of pain as his teeth sank into the fleshy parts of my palm.

  “Help me! Someone…. ”

  “Damn it, Jason, they’re gonna hear you!”

  I slapped my hand over his mouth again, fought back the urge to pull it away as he bit again.

  In the silence I could hear the tape again. The words were so slow now that they were unrecognizable as English.

  “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  I scooped the little boy into my arms. I was pretty sure we could make it into the woods behind the church before the corpses even realized we were gone. But we had to move now.

  The boy thrashed about in my arms and I tried to remind myself that he was terrified and probably hadn’t realized yet that I wasn’t one of them. But every instinct in my body wanted to slap him across the face.

  Something tickled the back of my neck and my heart felt as if it had literally stopped. End of the road. Those had to be fingers reaching out for me….

  I spun around, expecting to see a rotting face glaring back. But there was only a rope swinging back on forth with tassels on one end. A rope which lead up through a small hole in the ceiling.

  “We hafta go now”

  I began to run toward the door, but the boy was still fighting like two cats in a sack. He squirmed and flailed and kicked and bit down so hard I had to grit my teeth to keep from screaming as blood trickled down my hand.

  “Damn it, Jason, stop it! I’m here to help!”

  His hands grabbed onto the rope and he tried to pull himself free even as I was trying to move forward. Overhead I heard the bell toll, a low bong sound that seemed to ring out and waver in the silence.

  Silence. The tape had stopped completely.

  Jason pulled again, trying to wrestle himself from my grasp, and again the bell above chimed.

  “Jason, no!”

  Down the street, I saw them stream out of the electronics store. Corpse after corpse stumbled and tripped in their haste and it seemed like they just kept right on coming. The street filled with the
ir mangled limbs and twisted flesh, the freshies leading the charge at a full-blown run.

  There was no way we could make it to the forest now. Before we were even halfway there the freshies would bring us down like a bobcat on a rabbit. And the horde continued to draw closer even as the boy kept struggling and that old iron bell rang and rang, tolling out our doom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: JOSIE

  “We probably could’ve went with them for a spell.” Carl admitted as we walked. “They’re heading to Florida, we’re going for West Virginia. Right along the way, you might say.”

  “Then why didn’t we?”

  I was cold and tired and thought of the heater in the Hummer blasting out warm air as Doc and Sadie raced southward. The soft, comfortable seats….

  “I turned it over in my head. I really did. But I was afraid when we finally got to West-By-God it would be too easy just to keep right on truckin’.

  I felt annoyed and grouchy and wanted to snap at Carl, to lash out at him with my words. But I had to keep reminding myself that this was my choice. He hadn’t forced me to come with him. I’d kind of argued my way into his plans just so I wouldn’t have to say goodbye. Just to have more time with him. So I really didn’t have any other option but to play by his rules.

  “Where exactly are we going?”

  Carl searched through his pockets and brought out a pack of cigarettes which, as it turned out, were empty. He crumpled the pack into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder.

  Old habits die hard and I had to chew on my bottom lip to keep from launching into a lecture about litter and how we’re the custodians of this planet. But we weren’t. Not anymore. Trash carelessly tossed aside were the least of our worries now.

  “Not far from where I grew up. A little town called Brighton. Probably all grown over by now.”

  He was still fumbling through his pockets as he spoke, but I got the impression it was just a ruse. That he knew his hands would turn up empty but welcomed the distraction anyway.

  “Can’t believe I’ve got no more smokes. Doesn’t that just beat the devil?”

  “What’s in Brighton, Carl?”

  I tried to ask the question as innocently as possible, as if I were simply making conversation to pass the time. But I had this feeling that whatever laid in that little town among the hills and valleys of the Mountain State would be the key that would unlock the secrets of Carl’s sadness.

  He sighed and his voice dropped to no more than a whisper. I had to strain to hear him through the earmuffs he’d liberated from a freshy two days earlier, but it was important to me to catch every word.

  “There’s this little church I want to go to.”

  I laughed and shook my head in an attempt to keep the conversation light, to keep it flowing.

  “You? Going to church? If you’ve found God, Carl, there’s plenty of churches around here. It is part of the Bible belt you know.”

  He smiled, but it wasn’t the same one which caused my heart to flutter with hope and chased the cold out of my chest. This was a sad, knowing smile that never really touched his eyes.

  “It’s a little more complicated than that, sweetie.”

  “So tell me. Lord knows, we’ve got nothing but time.”

  Carl stopped, turned to face me, and took both of my hands in his; his eyes locked onto mine, his gaze steady and unfaltering.

  “It took the end of the world for me to find someone who made me realize it wasn’t such a bad place after all. And I want to tell you everything. And I mean everything.”

  Carl gave my hands a little squeeze and pulled me to him; he was now so close I could feel the warmth of his breath and see my own reflection in his tired eyes. And the woman I saw there was smiling: a soft, serene smile that would have looked more at home on a painting of the Virgin Mary than that odd, angular face. But I knew the smile was genuine, could feel it radiating with the heat of a thousand suns from deep within my soul.

  “But, sweetie, I’ve got to get it right in my head first.”

  “But I can help, I can …”

  “You do help.” he said. “More than you’ll ever know.”

  For a minute we stood there, simply looking into each other’s eyes, and that bleak and comfortless wasteland of snow just seemed to melt away. The freshies, the rotters, the refugees who picked through cruel relics of a world that no longer was: none of that mattered. Just this man, his hands, his eyes, his voice and breath….

  “When we get to that little church,” he finally said, “assuming it’s still standing that is, we’ll sit a spell on the pews. And I’ll tell you all of it. Each and every detail.”

  Carl’s eyes shimmered, but he made no move to blink away the tears forming there; he didn’t look away or fidget or give any indication that he felt even the least bit threatened by this display of emotion. He held my gaze and made a promise without uttering a word.

  And then, seeming as if he were moving in slow motion, Carl leaned forward; our lips touched in a brief, sweet kiss. It was the type of kiss I had always thought existed only in movies. The kind that reaches into the very core of your being and finds a small, warm spot to call home. Then we collapsed into one another’s arms, each of us holding the other as if we could somehow anchor ourselves to this particular place. This specific time. And cherish it for infinity.

  Maybe it was the lingering effects of that kiss. Or perhaps it was simply that after days of cloudy skies that looked as if they were wrapped in dirty cotton, the sun was finally shining again. Whatever the cause almost two days later, Carl and I were romping through the fields like excited children.

  We’d spent the better part of an hour playing in the snow: making angels in the drifts, lobbing loosely packed balls at one another as we darted to and fro, our laughter seeming surreal in the quiet of the Illinois winter. At one point, Carl even constructed what he referred to as a snow rotter: it was basically your typical snowman but was missing one eye and the branch that served as its left arm had been purposefully mangled. As a finishing touch, he’d punched in the side of the face that lacked an eye, giving the giant snowball a caved-in look.

  The entire time I’d been with him, I’d never seen him so happy and carefree. That haunted expression had temporarily vanished, giving way to eyes that sparkled and a smile that touched every inch of his face with its warmth and light. For a while, we were able to forget the death and destructions that lay out there; we could pretend that the world had simply continued on like it always had, that we would be returning to our jobs and bills, perhaps taking in a movie or snuggling on the couch as we listened to a Leonard Cohen CD by candlelight.

  And maybe this made us reckless. In fact, I’m sure it did. Why else would we would have begun an impromptu game of tag that had us running through the drifts like a wolf and hare in some nature documentary? Under any other circumstances we would have known better; we would have thought of consequences, of survival. But on this particular day, all of that seemed so far away. So distant and somehow, as strange as it may sound, unimportant.

  By the time we’d both been it several times, we were panting and out of breath. We stood there with our hands on our thighs, grinning at one another like a couple of happy idiots, not concerned with the film of sweat that had formed beneath all those clothes.

  “Ya know,” Carl gasped, “when we get to that little church, I think I’d like to…. ”

  His voice trailed off and he fidgeted before me. He seemed slightly uncomfortable, as if his clothes had suddenly become two sized too small, and I couldn’t tell if he was blushing or if the redness in his cheeks was just from exertion and the chill of the air.

  “Like to what?” I teased. “Repent all your worldly sins? Finally confess that there’s something out there bigger than …”

  “I think I’d like to marry you.”

  There were only a handful of times in my short life when I can honestly say that I was speechless. But this was one of them.

  “Now,
you don’t have to give me an answer right away.” he stammered. “You can think on it a spell. But I’ve never felt as right as I do when I’m with you. Never felt as whole.”

  “Yes.” I whispered as a grin crept across my face. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.”

  I threw myself into his arms and we kissed, slow and deeply. It was crazy: here we were, in a world where we didn’t know where our next meal would come from, where the cities and institutions of civilization had crumbled into ruin, where the dead walked the earth. And I had just been proposed to.

  “Come on.” I urged as I pulled his coat. “Let’s get moving. I want to get to that church as quick as we can.”

  Within fifteen minutes of walking, however, a coldness had seeped into my body like none I’d ever experienced. I glanced over at Carl and saw that his teeth were chattering as well, his lips light blue, and that he was hugging himself as tightly as he’d embraced me after the proposal.

  When he spoke, his words were stuttered and punctuated with the loud clacking of molars hitting against one another.

  “S-sweat d-dr-drying. C-c-cooling b-body temperatures.”

  I felt like there was an arctic tundra somewhere within my torso, somewhere so deep that no amount of clothing could ever thaw the glaciers that were forming there. Their cold radiated outward, causing chills to creep along my flesh as my body trembled.

  “N-need shelter.”

  Every step I took seemed to require more energy than the last and my arms had begun to feel like they were being pricked by millions of tiny thorns.

  “R-reckon it was pretty s-st-stupid to r-run… around l-like that.”

  It was weird, but I’d never felt so tired in my whole life. Almost as if every ounce of energy had suddenly been sapped from body, crystallized on the freezing surface of my skin, and then shattered into microscopic shards. I wanted nothing more than to just lay down in the snow for a little bit, maybe to take a little nap. I was positive it would be warmer down there in the drifts, that after a little sleep I’d be able to trudge onward. Nothing in the world had ever sounded better.